Bielefeld University Deploys ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation

ScaleMP has announced that the Molecular Magnetism Research Group (MMRG) of the Department of Physics at Bielefeld University, an institution internationally known for strong research achievements and unique courses of study, has deployed ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation for SMP. With vSMP Foundation for SMP, the MMRG is able to reduce capital expenditure requirements, improve and accelerate research project results and decrease the time spent managing technology – enabling the MMRG to remain a leader in the theoretical description of highly symmetric magnetic molecules.

“Since our research requires a large amount of memory and a stable compute environment, we found it very difficult to complete our research with the local resources that were previously available to us,” said Professor Jürgen Schnack, a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Bielefeld University and head of the MMRG. “With vSMP Foundation, I am able to focus on my physics problems without worrying about IT management taking time away from my research.”

Prior to ScaleMP, the MMRG used free computing resources from the Leibniz Supercomputing Center, which is very useful for large long-term projects, but can be difficult to schedule and gain immediate access for smaller, timely projects. The MMRG adopted vSMP Foundation for SMP in October 2009 to process their large matrices of data. Since deployment, the MMRG has had easy, on-premise access to a virtual symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) system which can support their high-performance workloads. This has enabled the MMRG to increase calculation speeds and solve larger problems for improved research quality and impact. Additionally, vSMP Foundation offers more flexibility when programming for an SMP machine and allows the research group to spend more time focusing on its research and less time managing the technology used to run simulations.

“While many academic institutions tend to be on the cutting edge of research, they often do not have access to the resources and technologies which can facilitate their projects,” said Shai Fultheim, founder and CEO of ScaleMP. “vSMP Foundation offers a low cost SMP solution which not only performs as well if not better than proprietary SMP solutions, but it offers a host of other benefits including easier management and the ability to create a compute resource which will match exact workload needs.”